Category: joy

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Howl

I’m not sure how many more times Pacer and I will get to hike this section, one of our favorites, on the Colorado Trail/Collegiate West…

The first time we hiked the Alpine Tunnel was with Sandi and Sage 10 years ago, just after we moved to Colorado. Then, 2 months later, we hiked through it again as we backpacked our way across the state. This year, we’ve been lucky enough to visit various parts of this trail 4 times, twice with Sandi and Sage (the best!). This time, I was just so grateful to have it all to ourselves, with Pacer getting to frolic and sniff freely while I watched, cried, and howled.



Crying and howling (howling feeling much more primal and alive in me than simply screaming) have almost become a staple of mine this year, bringing some relief to my grief and fear, while shadow/protector parts roared inside my head, parts that may have stayed more hidden in the dark if I didn’t have such intense love for a dog pouring through my veins. And as painful as these parts are, they needed to come to the light so I could see them.

As just a friend dreamed (visioned), Pacer is guiding me through and bringing me home, as I swirl through the darkness and play with various healing modalities, some that I never thought I would. I’ve gathered more humans on my team, and was almost overwhelmed as two of mentors, with tears in their eyes, told me how proud of me they were this week…not for doing well in sports or getting straight As, but for simply being me. Intuitive, sensitive, and weird.* It’s all be quite an adventure, really. 

And, while my mind wants to tell me how I messed things up or tell me where I should have been more perfect, underneath that, my heart is telling me it’s all been beautiful, too. It’s conscious, minute by minute choice, to drop allegiance to my mind and pledge allegiance to heart. Eventually, perhaps, my mind will become a faithful servant. Or perhaps it will be a continual process of observation- acknowledging the thought and accepting it without condition, while choosing my own way. Allowing my heart chakra to expand- holing the love, pain, and grief- the beauty of it all. Eventually knowing, even if only on my deathbed, it will all be alchemized back to its original source. 



Sometimes love doesn’t move mountains in the way we think it will. Sometimes it comes first as a roaring river, crushing us and bringing us to our knees. It cleanses us of our fear and false beliefs before rebuilding us, giving us a new foundation to stand on and an opportunity to become whole. We are gifted with a new chance to deepen our roots in the love that created us and the truth of who we are. We rise upward, connected and grounded, in a love that sets us free. 




beautypain #wanderlust #dogsofinstagram #spirituality #healing

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“Grateful”

Grateful.

I could also say “Grief.” Which really, says the same thing. Both belong to Love. 

I was briefly discussing this topic and dogs with my therapist yesterday (even as a therapist myself, it’s good to be seen by someone else)… we concluded with the fact that, “I love deeply.”

It pains me that perfect moments pass so quickly. Adventures end. Loves of our lives grow older. People die. Animals pass. Summer ends. Fall begins. Beauty shifts. Our days together won’t last forever. 

One day, “Pacer’s Pack”, won’t have our leader. Or rather, she will be pure Sunshine.

I try to savor. I try to be present. Yet when I hold on, when I cling, the pain is only worse. 
And so I just let go. I release the waterfall within. Currently, the my own water flow trajectory is at least once a week, sometimes at home on the floor, often in spaces where I know the Sky and Earth will hold me. This pattern has been monthly for more years that others may warrant as necessary. But I will stand strong in my deep empathy, my love. Things are still good, We are still agile, but my mind projects into the fading future, as well as the current breezes. 

In the end, it is only Love. It is all Love. 

I cry in grief. I cry because I am so goD damn grateful. I cry because I love so deeply. 

And if that is the greatest burden of my life, it is also the greatest gift. 

…and when I die, may I fade into Love and never know the difference.

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When I say dog, what I really mean is Love

When I say grief,
what I really mean is Love.
When I say pain,
what I really mean is my perceived absence of it. 
When I say fear,
what I really mean is that I have forgotten.
When I say dog, 
what I really mean is Love.
When I say Love,
what I really mean is that I have remembered.

***

Fear was created when we first felt separate from our parents or caregivers. When our needs or emotions weren’t met with care and compassion. To an infant or child, our earliest caregivers represent Love, or God. This is to stay it is during this time we truly felt separated from Love, which created fear in the body. Through developed mental processes, that fear materialized into stories of unworthiness and not enoughness. This created shame in the body, and further perceived separateness from Love. 

To remember who were are is to connect back to Oneness, to Love. We have to let go our stories, free (allow) the stuck emotions to be experienced, and surrender back to Love. Which takes Trust, because most of have forgotten a time when it was there. (Dogs and other animals can help remind us.) So ultimately, your trust fall is letting go of fear and falling back into Love.

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You Can’t Find Me There

“You can’t find me there.”

Today, on what would have been my “older” sister’s 41st birthday, I find myself searching for grief. I find a little, but no tears fall. Part of me feels guilty, like I should feel sad, like I still should be mourning her “too short life”. Guilty, knowing this might be my last post on my sister’s birthday. Like I should continue to feel weird for being physically older than my older sister ever got to be. Yet, I can hear my sister say, “You can’t find me there.”

And in truth, I know what she means. She’s free. She’s expanded. No longer bound by the limitations of human perception. The part of me that clings to grief as a way to connect, the part that tries to hold on to grief… while they served a purpose, those parts aren’t actually me.

So when I search for grief, I must dive so far into the well that at the bottom, I only find love. Then, when I find myself swimming in the joy of that Love, I know I’ll find her. I’ll be reminded that actually, we’ve never not been- we’ve always been- connected.

While my path back to finding her has been nothing short of wayward and wanderlust, she’s always been sending me signs, whispering “You can meet me here. You can be free now, too.” (while still incarnated). Just the other week, I was driving back home and asking for a sign on what to do. Before I could fully comprehend what was happening “Can’t Stop the Feeling” by Justin Timberlake (one of Amanda’s songs) comes on the radio while an RV pulls in from of me that says “T-Align”! The synchronicity of this is that my nickname for my older sister growing was “T” (and for the life of me I can not remember why) and lately I had been playing around the idea “what does it feel like to align with my True Self”?

Somedays, I can almost feel my sister holding my hand, just as I did for her when she was finding her way back Home and letting go of her human identity. She’s guiding me back toward the light, the truth of who I am. Who we are. Knowing that, if you are reading this, you came to earth for self-realization. To remember you are a soul in a human body. Away from the falsities and myths and limitations of the ego. She’s leading me back towards my deepest desire, to be free.

Here, I hear her say, “Yay!”

*Please be respectful of and honor your own journey with grief. There’s no time lifeline and no agenda on your path.

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Freedom & Death

And isn’t freeing to know…
…that we are all going to die?

That everything matters…
…and nothing matters?

Soon, it will all disappear.

The clothes and cars, yes. The people too. And you, the human.
The human with the stories, beliefs, and attachments. The story of you.
The limitations. The doubt. 

So yes-

Go thrust yourself into the beauty of life.
Climb that mountain.
Have your adventures.
Dance under the stars.
No, better yet…
dance in front of a crowd a let everyone whisper, “I wish I was more like her.”
Become her. You are Her. Free.

Know this too:

The mountain that you didn’t climb,
the adventure you never had,
the relationship you were never in
-those things never really mattered.

Your perception of wrong or right, 
bad or good,
you can’t take those when you go.

So laugh, cry, sing.
Release and die into the moment.

Letting go.
Back to stardust.
Back to Light. 

Share

****

While we’re in these physically bodies, it is important we live, but live without the pressure of living and doing “things right” or trying to do “everything”, because then we’re living in fear, not love. Yet love is often a forgotten state for many of us, and it is through the death of our limitations- our beliefs, our stories of not enooughness, our shame, and the continual allowing and surrender of our emotions- that we can return to love. And so, it is through the “death” or our small self, that we can become free while incarnated, then reclaim our small self that is now inspired by Love rather than fear. 

***I alway feel like I have to add this too, to cover my therapist basis. It’s never us, unless it’s really our time and then there is no choosing, that wants to die. It is always a PATTERN or a PART. It’s a shame-based belief system that our soul is ready to let go of. That is, essentially, what is asking to be seen, loved, and let go of/die. Our souls want us to experience the joy of being alive.

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Meant to Be

If you were supposed to be “healed” by now, you would be.

If you were meant to have won that race, you would have.

If you were meant to still be with that person, you would be.

If you were meant to get that job, you would have.

If you were supposed to be father along by now, you would be.

If those plans were supposed to work out, they would have.

If that person was supposed to still be here, they would be.

If you were mean to make a different decision, you would have.

If life were meant to be different than it is right now, it would be. 

Breathe.

Everything that has happened was meant to happen. 

Everything that didn’t happen wasn’t meant to happen.

Everything that is meant to happen, will happen.

Breathe.

Here is where you will find your peace.

Suffering lies in the shoulds, attachments, and wishes of things being different than they are.

You have power, just not control (of the external).*

This doesn’t meant we stop learning or growing. In fact, this is the catalyst for growth.

Now that we know what happened is what was meant to happen, we CAN grow, as guilt and shame are what block us from blossoming. Acceptance, curiosity, and love become fertilizers. 

Breathe.

You are right where you are meant to be.

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Gifts of Evolution (Part 1)

You will always receive exactly what you need for your highest possible evolution… if you accept the challenge as a gift.

Now I know…the idea of “everything happens for a reason” has often been poo-pooed upon by many as “toxic positivity”*.

*Positive psychology is highly misunderstood. It is a strength based process that doesn’t ignore problems but puts a larger focus on what is (going) right.

…And it’s absolutely not.

Part of the challenge is, in fact, feeling your emotions fully so you can uncover the wounds that are asking to be healed.

By accepting life as it is, and that even challenges have a gift for you, it takes you out of the victim mentality and back into a position of power. It’s an acknowledgement that you are the co-creator of your life.

Even in this belief, or knowing, you might not feel good at first. It still may take days and months (and sometimes even years or a lifetime) to process the emotions and experience. Yet now, you can keep moving forward.

(Personally, although I think I am speaking for many here, the victim mentality can keep me in a dangerously depressed state.)

You don’t actually have to like what you’re receiving (although your soul WILL be rejoicing). You just have to accept it. In that willingness, you’ve already stepped into a higher version of yourself.

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Grief: A Word for Love


Grief is the ultimate transformer. We can ignore it, we can shove it down, and we can try to keep ourselves sewn together. Or, we can allow it to break us open.

Open into new dimensions of love.

The brain says grief is about loss. The heart says it’s about allowing yourself to expand into new dimensions beyond the physical body.

When we lose a loved one (human or animal), experience a break up, lose everything, we think “I can’t do this. This grief is too much for me to bear.” 

The blessing is we don’t have to hold it alone or keep it within the confines of the physical body. When we surrender to the grief and allow it to move, letting go of the story line, we open up to a power bigger than ourselves, an energy beyond our physical bodies, and energy that allows us to feel all of the grief built up inside of us. And, it is from this higher perspective that we can see more clearly and from this expanded energy we can feel with more clarity, knowing that is was all really Love. 

Here, we are reunited with all that we thought was lost and remember the truth of our being.

Buy Pacer a Treat

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An Easter Sermon

I started writing this on “Good Friday”, a day of mourning and reflection for many Christians.

That morning, while playing in the annual spring snow storm with my dog in Colorado, I wondered if I could still send my Catholic parents our weekly “Happy FriYay!” text.

After my mom sent a “Good Friday blessings” sticker to the group chat, I again texted my twin sister and again debated the question.

Meanwhile, as my sister and I were texting back and forth, my 13 year old cousin already texted back to the group chat. “Happy FriYay!”, she said. 

I admired​, in awe.

While baptized and with a few years of PSR (Parish School of Religion) under her belt, my cousin is less indoctrinated into the history of shame I had grown up in, having myself spent K-8th grade in Catholic school.

Historically, today was a day we were supposed to feel guilty, as it was embedded in us that Jesus had died for our sins. And as sinners, we must repent and mourn. I won’t even get into the projection of sins and the psychological effect this has on a 1st grader.

But did Jesus really say we should all mourn and feel the burden of shame for centuries to come?

I’m not an expert in the Bible, but I’m pretty sure there is no passage where Jesus tells someone they are a bad person for making a mistake, to feel shameful, and to go repent and prove they are worthy of God’s forgiveness.

Actually, I’m pretty sure Jesus forgave. Even to those who supposedly killed him, the Bible passage is, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” 

I’m pretty sure Jesus, having already reached enlightenment as a human, just forgave and kept on preaching compassion and loving your neighbor, no matter what. (Don’t ask me how so few people in the church see the above as “conditional love”, or fear based conditioning.​ In school, we weren’t supposed to ask questions.) 

Before I move on though, let me say I don’t hate organized religion. There’s so much beauty, so much kindness, charity, and healing that can happen just from having a community. And not all religions and churches flip the love script to such a fearful degree. I will also forever be grateful to the Catholic Church for helping my parents find solace and healing after losing siblings, their parents, and then their daughter (my older sister). 

What I am saying is, let’s preach real, true, unconditional love. (It’s a little silly that I have to put so many adjectives before the word “love”. Love should just mean love, but sadly it’s been turned on us so many times where it’s become necessary.) This means loving others when they believe different from us, and knowing if God doesn’t have an ego, They probably don’t care what we believe, either. (Personally, I don’t believe in god as a single entity, but the unification of all of us, all consciousness, as One Divine Being.) 

Beyond shame for our sins is an acknowledgment of our mistakes of forgetfulness. And by forgetfulness, what I mean is we only act poorly when we’ve forgotten the truth of who we are. If we are from God, if we are a slice of the pie (to paraphrase Wayne Dyer), we are all Rays of Light, made out of pure Love. It’s only when we forget this, believe in scarcity, and that we create and act out of fear. So what is important is realizing that this world has a history of crucifying those who preach Love, being it Jesus or Martin Luther King Jr., as well as leaving women out of the picture as much as possible. And while we’d all like to believe that we would have followed Jesus or MLK, the numbers show that most likely, we wouldn’t have. Which is why it’s so important that we look at our shadows now. The parts of that not only made mistakes and acted out of fear, but the parts of us that believe we’re not enough, that we are not already inherently worthy of all the Love of the Universe. 

That leads to the main focus of this sermon: What does it mean to rise?

Which, My Loves, my first be better answered in the question: What does it mean to die?

In spiritual communities, what we often say is that we all have the opportunity to die, often many deaths, before our physical departure. Actually, this is what Nature shows us too, as each seasonal cycle spins from nothingness, to growth, to fullness, and then death, back to nothingness. That is, before a rebirth. The physical body dies, but the energy, the Love, continues. 

What if death was simply a letting go of all the parts of us that were created out of forgetfulness, created out of fear? The parts of us that tell us mean stories about ourselves in our head, that like to criticize, and control. The parts of us that act out of greed or that ​were willing to do anything, just to feel better? 

And what if we just forgive all those parts? It wasn’t their fault. They were just going off of the story they were told. 

What if we just offer ourselves compassion? 

Acknowledging where we slipped up, seeing the wound underneath, and offering to our old selves something like “I know you were doing your best. You just go scared. You believed you weren’t loved. You forgot that you are already Love. It’s okay. I remember now.” 

And then we transform and transcend. We see the gifts and talents of our wounded parts. We rise above the stories of our head, the fear-based identities of our egos, and we return Home, back to our True Selves. 

This isn’t the story I was told as a kid, but my belief is that Jesus, as well as Mother Mary, and Mary Magdalene, had already died before their deaths. They had already risen above the wounded stories of human kind and remembered that their true form was Light & Love. And so, when Mary Magdalene saw Jesus emerge from the tomb on Easter, it was because she had already attuned herself to the frequency of Love, so that day, she was not only meeting Jesus, but herself as well. 

My Loves, if I haven’t made it clear already, we all have the opportunity to rise. Right here, right now. 

Yet, it’s okay if it takes some time and some deep inner work. It’s taken me years, and I’m definitely not all the way back Home to myself. And regardless, it’s going to happen. Now, or when your human self is at death’s door. But if it’s possible, why not start your ascent today?

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What inside of you is asking to be set free?

In my work as a psychotherapist, I have the pleasure of working with and learning from many artists. One of my clients recently showed me one of his wood carvings, and I was truly, truly amazed. I asked him how he did it. He said he really couldn’t explain how it felt (another energy seemed to take over), but he knew that anytime he had a pre-planned idea in mind of what he thought it should be, it never turned out as good.

I thought, “Wow.  What a great metaphor for therapy.” The truth is, most of us are buried beneath stories of who we should be. Therapy is the work of chipping away at those stories, setting free the most authentic version of ourselves.

We are all, individually, masterpieces.  Togher, we are part of an even grand tapestry, so big and amazing we can’t even comprehend while in physical form. Much of the tapestry is still covered in shadows.  But if you are willing to uncover your own masterpiece within, you invite others to take the covers off their own.  When you live your own authentic truth, you naturally set others free as well.

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